Sold my maggies and moved my bookies into my office so my current listening room is naked and only has my main headphone and turntable rig setup.
It’s 12 ft x 10 ft x 9 ft in size (spare basement bedroom) and I sit ~ 9 feet away but can by 8-10 feet depending on how much the speeks need to be moved from the wall.
Really just searching for suggestions at this point that i can start researching and seeking out to demo. My initial short list is:
Zu Dirty Weekends
Tekton Lore
Tekton Pendragon
Revel F206
ELAC Uni-Fi Reference UFR52
Polk R700
Jamo S807
Klipsch Heresey IV
Totem Acoustics Forest or Wind
Wharfdale Evo 4.4
Budget is somewhere between $1k - $3.5k for the pair and will target used if possible. I’m toying with the idea of getting an efficient set of towers to pair with a SET amp but not sure yet.
It needs to be a solid performer in a smallish room, decent value technically for the money… I’m biased against JBL/Klipsch/Horns but am a bit curious at the new Hereseys. I would prefer something that is a bit warmer but am not opposed to a lively tweeter just not sibilant. Not planning to buy a sub so a bit of bass punch/extension would be welcomed.
The Zu ticks all the boxes based on your wish list there. I’m speaking from first hand experience with them. I also considered the Lore when I was shopping but honestly I couldn’t live with the fit/finish quality comparison.
They LOVE tube and just a handful of watts get them happy, they do work best with warmer and more well bodied SS stuff if you don’t give them tubes. They’re super easy to set up and get good music, but if you want to REALLY dial them in, they’ll take some tweaking. I found that they respond very well to moving them around, even a half inch made a difference. They’ll work well with a 8 foot equilateral triangle, and then start dialing them in from there. Toe and tilt really help to dial them in exactly as desired.
I will tell you that the Zu’s do need the clarity Cap which will add cost and if you go any other color than the basic oak when the DWs are on sale, they’ll get to the $1400 price range quickly.
OH one thing to add is they go pretty low as is, but a sub will help give you space in the staging but in the size room you say you’ll be putting them into they should be fine without one. I had them in a room with no walls on two sides so the sub helped a lot.
I had a vintage Carver amp, that was Class H but it was designed to mimic exactly a well known tube amp from the 80’s. I had a Freya + and the DAC is an Amber 3, so a lot of “tubey” in the chain.
For the longest I had a little shouty in the mids, they’re certainly not thin in the mids. And I spent a lot of time getting them placed right. I spoke Sean Casey who suggested giving them a little bit of toe and the voicing just came together. That’s why I say, they’re easy to get sounding good, but if you’ve got an ear, they respond very well to micro positioning changes.
Given your list I’d go for the DWs or the Pendragons for sure.
Can’t speak for any others on the list but the Heresy may be a good fit as well.
I think it may be the desire to shoot for $1000 used!
Although $3500 used gets you a lot of speaker. It’s just the shipping to contend with, but filtering the sales sites by state generally find pretty good deals within driving distance.
I sold my maggies because they sounded terrible in a smaller sized room near the wall. Some reviews I read about DI is likely my room is too small and that a min of 10 feet away is required for optimal performance. So I would need 2 feet of room from back walls then another 10 feet and that is bigger than my room.
LRS is one speaker that would work very well for me where I am now. But yeah, can see why it wasn’t a good fit for you. What’s the market rate for used LRWs? They’re still like $700 or so new right?
